VA Hospital bans religious Christmas carols

I think this is despicable. It also shows what is happening under the godless Obama Administration… who did not go to Church on Christmas, even though last week he (hypocritically?) said we should remember the religious dimension of Christmas. BAH!

AUGUSTA, Ga. (CBS Atlanta) – An Augusta hospital has adopted a new policy banning Christmas carolers from singing religious songs in public patient areas.
The Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center [The Obama Administrations VA.] announced the new policy Monday according to the Athens-Banner Herald.
“Military service veterans, male and female, represent people of all faiths,” hospital spokesman Brian Rothwell said in a statement according to Athens-Banner Herald. “It is out of respect for every faith [B as in B. S as in S.] that The Veterans Administration gives clear guidance on what ‘spiritual care’ is to be given and who is to give it.”

A group of high school students from Augusta’s Alleluia Community School were prevented from singing traditional holiday songs that honor and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ to veterans by the medical center last week.
The school principal, Dan Funsch, told the newspaper that he was disappointed that the Veterans Affairs hospital’s “spiritual care” grants holiday exemption only to secular characters that make up the 12 Days of Christmas.
“This is not a religious proselytizing, evangelistic issue,” Funsch explained, arguing that Christmas songs are broadcast during the holidays on area radio stations and in local retail outlets. “The song Joy to the World is as much a part of the holiday spirit as the Christmas tree.”
The principal noted that the peculiar part of the policy is its recent enforcement.

[…]

If Pres. Obama and his ilk have their way, any expression of religious values and tenets will be banned. Given time, they will pass laws to punish people who express religious views in the public square. Off to the reeducation camps for you. And their liberal catholic will be right there supporting the enlightened and no-doubt-necessary policy.

19 Responses to VA Hospital bans religious Christmas carols

Wasn’t the 12 Days of Christmas actually a coded Catholic recusant hymn?

Maybe what ought to happen is that we just defy these unconscionable orders and make the government bodily eject us from their premises and prosecute us. Perhaps we ought to resist, even if we can’t hope to win. Even if they are going to win, we should at least make them earn it.

Maybe it’s just me, because I’m a convert, but in a similar vein my family and I were discussing how strange it is that Catholics don’t sing, and that there seems to be a culture of waiting for permission in the Catholic church. Is this it? My first reaction to this awful story is anger, followed closely by the question–so what? Why aren’t they just *singing* anyway? Sing first and ask forgiveness later, you know? Anyway–my two cents. Rush in and distribute the cards to the veterans (who’s going to stop little kids?)–in the Texas case. Sing carols in this case. Why wait for *permission* from godless people?

“the godless Obama Administration… who did not go to Church on Christmas.”

Have you ever been to a church, or any place otherwise left to the general public, when the President shows up? Trust me, you don’t want to. [So?]

It’s not just another day. Secret Service agents basically take over, and make life a pain in the neck for everybody except the President and his entourage. It is for this reason that many chief executives have chosen not to attend church regularly while in office (among them no less than the late President Reagan).

I’ve worked in Washington for over thirty years. I’ve been invited to three private Christmas tours of the White House. The President has never been there when I have, and I’d just as soon leave it that way, even if he’s a guy I voted for (which isn’t a problem here).

And what are “secular characters that make up the 12 Days of Christmas”? People dressed like, for example, partidges? “Hi, I may be only a talking goose, but even I know there would be no 12 Days of Christmas if Twelfth Night were not followed by the Feast of the Epiphany…”

So, out of concern for Christians they may sure no Christian gets to hear any Christian songs on Christian Feasts… mighty thoughtful!

Very interesting observation! There is certainly a lot of that within the Church, however I don’t think it is just a Catholic thing. I remember when the “Barrycades” were going up during the government shutdown, reading sob stories from people who traveled across the country to see Mount Rushmore and they “had to” drive past because there were little orange cones in the way. I thought “You have GOT to be kidding me!” For some reason many people prefer their righteous indignation to actually doing something. I saw it all the time while living in England, and it bothers me that so many in the USA are becoming the same way.

Hey! Augusta is my hometown and the VA’s silliness epitomizes Washington not my fair and religious city where I was pastor for 14 years of Georgia’s oldest Catholic Church, the Church of the Most Holy Trinity founded in 1810 and it’s stunning Romanesque Revival new church begun in 1857 and completed and Consecrated in April of 1863 during the height of the War between the States. Both the Alleluia Community and the Church of the Most Holy Trinity as well as Augusta have produced more priestly vocations in the last 25 years than any other parish, community or city, including Savannah, in the Diocese of Savannah!

Luvadoxi – There’s a quite good book out on the very topic: Why Catholics Can’t Sing. The original was published 20 years back, but it has been just recently updated. (I’ve not yet seen the update.) The original examined the topic from several perspectives, including the poor quality of much modern Catholic music, ignorance of Church music history, and even the large number of Irish Catholics who came to America and brought along their reluctance to sing aloud for fear of the British Protestants. Might well be worth a read for you, and I’ll bet you can get it via Fr. Z’s Amazon link.

“It is for this reason that many chief executives have chosen not to attend church regularly while in office (among them no less than the late President Reagan).” manwithblackhat

President Reagan decided after the assassination attempt that he did not want to subject those in a house of worship to more intrusive security measures. President Reagan was a regular reader of Scripture during his tenure and he never canceled The National Day of Prayer unlike the current occupant of the oval office.

Big difference between that and the behavior of Soetoro who has no problem subjecting the Marines stationed at Kaneohe Bay to the inconvenience of his presence everywhere, particularly the golf course, except the base chapel.

I would NEVER defend Obama… but assuming he were a Christian (which I doubt) he would not be in church on Christmas because protestants in general do not have services on Christmas day… maybe on Christmas Eve but not on the day. Remember the protestants did away with ALL obligations regarding worship…

Cantor,
Have an older edition of the book. I wish it had some better suggestions for dealing with a non-singing congregation that refuses to support a good and musically Catholic choir (Chant, a little medieval and a lot of Renaissance polyphony, plenty of Baroque, plus a few good solid Romantics and Moderns).
We are constantly trying to recruit new members, with very little success. I know in a parish of 2000+ families there must be competent musicians in the congregation, but they won’t come forward.
It is quite a culture shock for an Episcopalian convert – in a parish less than half the size of this one, the choir was audition-only and there was a waiting list for the available spaces. Tours, guest choirs, radio shows, recordings . . . they may be a bunch of heretics but they value music. The kicker is that 95% of everything we sang was CATHOLIC music that Catholics aren’t singing any more. How embarrassing!

MarkJ,
I beg to differ — we drive past a lot of churches on our way to our parish – 2 Methodist churches, a breakaway Anglican church, an Episcopal church, and an ENORMOUS evangelical/pentecostal church that is nominally a “Full Gospel Church of God of Cleveland Tennessee” but is doing its best to play down that affiliation. They all have Christmas Day services, and most have a Watch Night service as well. Now admittedly the Piskies and Anglicans THINK they’re Catholic, but that doesn’t explain the Methodys and certainly not the CoGs.

Search Fr. Z’s Blog

Search for:

When you shop…

... through Amazon, please, come here first? Enter Amazon through my search box. I'll then get a small percentage of everything you buy. (Pssst - Can't see the search box? Turn off your "ad-blocker" for this site!)

My wish lists

The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD.

- Proverbs 21:31

For Easter: another ethereal music CD from the chart-topping nuns…

Support them with prayer and fasting.

CLICK to buy Car Magnets & Stickers

Aedificantium enim unusquisque gladio erat accinctus.

- Nehemiah 4:18

"Let God arise! Let His enemies be scattered! Let those who hate him flee before His Holy Face!"

CLICK and say your Daily Offering!

Let us pray…

Grant unto thy Church, we beseech
Thee, O merciful God, that She, being
gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may
be in no wise troubled by attack from her
foes.
O God, who by sin art offended and by
penance pacified, mercifully regard the
prayers of Thy people making supplication
unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of
Thine anger which we deserve for our sins.
Almighty and Everlasting God, in
whose Hand are the power and the
government of every realm: look down upon
and help the Christian people that the heathen
nations who trust in the fierceness of their
own might may be crushed by the power of
thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee
in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world
without end. R. Amen.

Yes, Fr. Z is taking ads…

... and there will be nearly 1,000,000 page loads this month.

A bit more food for thought…

“Only one sin is nowadays severely punished: the attentive observance of the traditions of our Fathers. For that reason the good ones are thrown out of their places and brought to the desert.”

- Basil of Caesarea - ep. 243

Help Monks in Wyoming, Fr. Z, and get great coffee too!

Food For Thought

“The legalization of the termination of pregnancy is none other than the authorization given to an adult, with the approval of an established law, to take the lives of children yet unborn and thus incapable of defending themselves. It is difficult to imagine a more unjust situation, and it is very difficult to speak of obsession in a matter such as this, where we are dealing with a fundamental imperative of every good conscience — the defense of the right to life of an innocent and defenseless human being.”

- St. John Paul II

PLEASE RESPOND. Pretty pleeeease?

Should the US Bishops have us return to obligatory "meatless Fridays" during the whole year and not just during Lent?

Because you don’t know when you are going to need to move fast or get along without the supermarket…

Identity theft is a serious problem that you do NOT want to have. I use Lifelock.

And for your cybersecurity…

Wyoming Catholic College!

A great place in Rome…

More food for thought:

“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

Check out the Cardinal Newman Society feed!

Be a “Zed-Head”!

Fr. Z’s stuff is everywhere

More food for thought…

"All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void."

- Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 176

Even More Food For Thought

"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties:
1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.
2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests."

To set up a recurring, monthly donation (even a small one) go to the bottom of this blog and look for the drop down menu! Some donations also come through Chase/Manhattan (if you don't like PayPal).

I remember benefactors in my prayers and periodically say Mass for your intention.

I invite you to subscribe to a monthly donation.

Will you help? Go to the bottom of the page. So far, new subscribers for MARCH - TZ

Additional Food For Thought

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Fathers, you don’t know who might show up! It could be a “big fish” of one sort or other…

And... GO TO CONFESSION!

Leave Voice Mail for Fr. Z

Nota bene: I do not answer these numbers or this Skype address. You won't get me "live". I check for messages regularly.

Help the Sisters. They have a building project. Get great soap (gifts, etc.) while helping REAL nuns!

Food For Thought

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

Archives

ENTRY CALENDAR

Do you use my blog often? Is it helpful to you?

If so, please consider subscribing to send a monthly donation. That way I have steady income I can plan on, and you wind up regularly on my list of benefactors for whom I pray and for whom I periodically say Holy Mass.

Some options

The opinions expressed on this blog do not necessarily reflect the positions of any of the Church's entities with which I am involved. They are my own.